by Noah Harris
As cramped as it had been in the shuttle, I think we all feel a little lost when we spread out too far. Having a place to do our work together, without necessarily having to talk or be interesting, is a nice balance. Stop by almost any time of day and there they’ll be, calling your name, laughing. Demanding you join them.
By the third day, Hellstrom and Alden had moved the coffeemaker down to their makeshift office. It’s funny how a place can feel like home so quickly depending on who you’re with.
Lying in the bunk with Alden, as we spin through the dark, becomes a world of its own. The eyes can play tricks and dreams feel like memories.
There are times when I swear it’s like the old stories, that we are dream-brothers, wolves connected through dreaming. Dreaming each other’s dreams, living in each other’s skins.
Once, I woke to an insistent nose, poking at me like a whiffling dog’s muzzle. It sniffed at my armpits, my neck, inhaling so deeply I could hear a whistle. Breathing me in. But when I opened my eyes, Alden seemed fast asleep. Every six hours, another strange dream, memory, or fantasy of being wrapped up in his heat.
As we draw closer to the moon, I swear the effect is getting stronger. The dreams are certainly getting weirder, more vivid. I wake, or dream I’m waking, to both of us grinding against each other, erections beneath our clothes aching, begging for release.
On the fourth night, Alden whispers into my neck.
“Hey,” soft and deep. “Want to see something cool?”
We rarely speak, that’s part of the arrangement, so I’m taken first by the novelty. I stretch my neck back until I can feel Alden’s face against my ear, and then his grin against my face. He reaches down between us and pulls up the edge of his own shirt, exposing his abs, and then he raises mine, to the middle of my back. Where we touch it feels like fire, and ice. His skin against mine feels so good that I moan, deliciously, and Alden laughs with a quiet heat.
“Isn’t that amazing?” he says, tenderly. “Why doesn’t anybody tell you? It’s so simple.”
He draws one knee up between my legs, and I clasp my thighs around it, pushing back against that strong, tight body, demanding more. Alden obliges, raising our shirts even higher as I straighten against him. Without really thinking, I raise my arms above my head, and Alden slips my shirt off altogether, and then his own.
From my waist to my shoulder blades is just the electric expanse of Alden Armstrong, his firmness, that strength, pushing back just as fiercely as I’m arching into him, those arms holding me tight against his firm chest.
It feels so good that Alden’s erection between us barely registers. It’s hard to imagine a pleasure greater than this, drinking in the feeling of his skin and muscle, offered up freely. It’s even harder to imagine being strong enough to leave. I can see myself still here in a year, five years.
I can see us growing together, like a tree. Vines, thick branches and slow, mossy songs. A mighty oak, continually in love with the touch of itself.
He’s right. It’s an actual crime that nobody tells you this. How good it can be, to simply touch. How am I supposed to sleep, ever again, without this man wrapped around me? I don’t think I would care to even if I could. Nothing is ever going to compare to this.
And along comes the omega guilt, right on time.
There’s nothing I want more than to bear life, to find myself wed and bred. The center of a family. And surely that will be more fulfilling than this, even if I can’t currently see how. But still, my body insists this is as far from the real thing as sex without love would be.
And yet, our bodies seem to have their own plans. In the pack they’d say our wolves were learning each other. But of course, Alden doesn’t have a wolf. We’ll wake up facing each other, or in some other new configuration. A few times, one of us is able to catch it as it’s happening, with a clear enough mind to know it’s not just a weird fantasy or dream.
I wake facing Alden, curled up with my hands clasped together on his chest and Alden’s arms loosely around my shoulders. Looking at his face under the starlight, the lovely feeling of our shirtless bodies feels as heavy and sharp as a dagger. Everything urges me to reach out, wrap a hand around Alden’s girth, touch his face, nibble his lip...
I shudder with desire and pleasure, enough to disturb Alden’s rest. He shifts a bit before settling down again. I realize I’m breathing so hard I can hear myself and force myself to calm down. I doze again, but only after running my cheek along Alden’s hard arms.
When I wake later that night, it’s to the sound of a throaty chuckle that’s almost a growl, like a beast. I open my eyes to find Alden’s glittering back, in the dark. Or is it just a trick of the light, caused by his face in the shadows?
Maybe it’s a dream altogether. By morning, the whole thing’s almost gone, leaving just the scent of our lust, lingering in the heat of our bodies.
When Pippa and Harbaugh summon us to their gallery, I’m astonished to see the moon, all 2,159 miles diameter of her, hanging bright and huge. Is it that time already? It feels like time has passed too quickly and yet it also feels like months have gone by.
Our sleep cycle is so deranged, we’re half in the world and half in our twilight realm. Alden and I share an unspoken reverence for this time together, by whatever pact our bodies have made with each other. We appear as if by scheduled invitation, strip off our shirts and dive in, bobbing on the surface of unconsciousness together, dipping down into deeper sleep and swooping up again, replenished. We’ve lived a whole life in that bunk together. Does this mean it’s coming to an end?
“We’re about an hour out,” Harbaugh says, which I’m comforted to see takes us all a bit by surprise.
Sergeant Hellstrom watches Alden carefully, picking up on a restlessness or alertness I know I’m showing too. When she offers to take him to the gym for some sparring, he jumps at the chance. It’s up to me and the captain to prepare everything for launch, while Pippa packs up a room at a time and hustles it all past us into the shuttle.
We’re all still pretty leery of getting back on the thing, but there’s technically no reason for us to worry, and anyway, there’s no reasonable alternative. Even if the escape pods could fit us all, we’d be going without supplies, and a hard landing would definitely require a lot of time to get our bearings and travel to Tiptree colony. We need plenty of oxygen, and plenty of radiation shielding, plenty of extra time to make it to safety. All of which means weight, which means the shuttle.
I know Pippa hates it, and the senior officers are in a hurry. I think Alden honestly feels a little attached to the shuttle, like it’s his first ship. It’s not so easy for me.
There’s a nearly imperceptible fault in the screens, a tiny blinking jump in the readouts once every few minutes, that nobody else is sharp enough to see. They trust me that it’s there, though, and that as long as it holds for the thirty-six hours from launch to landing, we’ll be fine.
The captain just reminds us. “We always knew this was going to be a bumpy one.”
Carrying equipment, robots or building materials is always more cost effective when you make “hard” landings, just dropping the contents onto the surface, without accounting for speed or gravity or a way back. The biweekly shuttle that supplies the construction site usually doesn’t even bother landing.
However, with humans aboard, not to mention our plants, the seed vault and Pippa’s cultures, a soft landing is required. We need rockets to slow us down and balance our descent. Still not exactly landing on a cloud, but it’s a hell of a lot smoother than being fired at the lunar surface like a bullet from a gun.
Every simulation I’ve run puts us down within just a few klicks of Tiptree, so I’m not too concerned with how we’ll eventually get there from the landing zone. As long as the rockets hold, and we don’t pop a random breach, the temp shelter will provide enough safety for all of us to start with.
There are further dangers, of course. Solar flares damaging one instrument or an
other. The possibility of space garbage, micrometeorites, all kind of things that could punch holes in the hull. Tiny enough holes to keep us alive long enough to asphyxiate.
But Pippa says our voyage so far is already so unlikely that it’s silly to worry about hypothetical disasters. These dangers have always existed, she says, but have never actually happened in real life on any of these voyages, hard landings or soft. The provisioner has been making the journey every two weeks for the past six years. Probability says if they’re fine, we’ll be fine. That it’s hubris to think we’d be marked for calamities, like we’re special.
I’m not so sure about that, but I have my own problems to deal with. Whether it’s the moon looming closer, or coming onto my strange off-season heat, my mind is in continuous uproar. The only thing that soothes me are the times in bed, skin-to-skin with Alden. Everything else is approaching a frenzy.
But I’m not there yet. For now, colors and scents are more vibrant, and the light can sometimes get too bright for me. And my wolf, locked down deep, waiting for the next full moon is ready to howl.
Back home I was always embarrassing myself one way or the other, too loud or too soft, too excitable or too emotional, so I shut down. It’s still curious to me when people say I’m quiet or laid-back, because in my head I’m still that screaming, dramatic omega they were always telling to shut up.
I found a place in the first year. A place I could go to when I felt sad, overwhelmed, or if everything just got too much. A clearing, far into the woods beyond the school’s playing fields, where generations past must have gone to drink their illicit wine, kiss and whatever else they do. It’s harder to get to now, as the forest has made up its own mind. But for me, it’s easy as anything to slip between the shadows where I can be stronger and faster than I can ever be when humans are watching.
I kept books there, and rations, candles and a tarp for when it rains. I didn’t want to just leave those things lying around, so I’d hide them before I went home. And in the center of that small clearing, there’s space enough for a bonfire. And sometimes, at night, when the moon was getting larger in the sky, I liked to imagine lighting one there.
In the world I pictured in my mind, everybody knew I was a shifter, and nobody cared. Others admitted to hiding in plain sight. Even teachers. And every month, we’d go out there and light the flames, shed our clothes, and go roaming through the woods.
The oldest thing in the world, right up against the newest. Humanity’s secrets and our future. It feels holy, and safe, and more than a little sexy.
I thought, more than once, it would be nice to go out there to shift on my own. But I knew I couldn’t trust myself to stay behind the lines, so I’d have to chain myself there, to a tree or something, and suffer through the change that way. And while plenty of my brothers and sisters are used to doing it that way, chained up or caged in, I can’t imagine ever doing anything so terrible. More than that, I can’t stop imagining all the things that could go wrong.
So instead, every month I’d take a two-hour bus ride east, to a shifter-owned nature preserve, and hope I didn’t run into anybody while I was there. A few times I came close to parties being held in the night. Some of them seemed nice, with guitars and laughter. Most of them seemed like terrifying beer bashes, or motorcycle rallies. But those, you can usually smell the alpha in the air before they notice you.
Not that they aren’t friendly, shifters stick together. And alphas will compete over anything in big packs like that. Even how chivalrous they can be toward a young omega who’s wandered across their path.
But, as I’ve been told my whole life, once the sun goes down and the moon comes up, you’d rather be dead than find yourself at their mercy. After the bus ride, with as many hours of daylight as I can give myself, I find a solitary place where I can shift, run, and hunt. Then go home, thanking the moon that I’m within driving distance of a place like this and scared to think about what I’d do if I weren’t.
After the mission, we’ll be kept at Flight School for several months to study, so that’s at least a few full moons when I can still use that park. It hurts my stomach to think about what I’ll do after that. I’ve assured myself a career with this publicity stunt, though. That’s a good place to start building a life, even a lonely one.
Alden comes looking for me after his workout, sweat dripping from his hair and close-cropped beard. It’s a good sign because he’ll be relaxed and happy, but seeing it is also a warning that I’ll be smelling him soon enough. The bestial, alive smell of a man. In 3-D Technicolor, while the rest of the world is tone-deaf black and white.
As badly as I want to run away, I want to stay even more.
“You look as wild as I feel,” Alden laughs, looking me up and down, searching my face.
“I doubt it,” I squeak, trying for comedy, but knowing I must sound terrified. He grows sober, looking closer.
“What’s up, cadet? Do you need anything?”
I shake my head. “Jitters, I guess. Ready to get going.”
Alden doesn’t need to know about the hormones flooding me, turning me into a bundle of raw nerves. He seems to sense it regardless. I wonder if it’s what brought him looking for me in the first place. His sense of timing is getting bizarre.
“We’ve got time for a nap…” Alden looks dubiously back over his shoulder, the others are busy tying everything down, and I shake my head again.
“No. I’m good. Just needed a minute to clear my head.”
Pippa’s voice comes over the loudspeaker then, angrily clearing her throat and speaking with a dead-eyed lack of humor.
“Looks like a false alarm, kiddies. We’ll have to wait another day to make the jump. Solar activity’s too weird, and the captain doesn’t want to undertake this leg until we have a firm connection with HQ. As you were. Consider the next four hours a vacation.”
For some reason, I’m relieved. The hugeness of the moon, passing as close as it will to us, and then fading away again, puts a time limit on this feeling in the pit of my aching stomach that keeps warning me, ‘You’ll lose control if this mission doesn’t end soon.’
It’s just math. I took my full moon furlough a few days before the banquet, so I have at least two weeks before I need to be alone, before my next run. But something in my body is quite sure it’s not that simple, and I can’t put my finger on why. Just this free-floating, never ending anxiety about what I might find myself doing.
If this really is a heat coming on in the middle of the season, why expect anything else to stick to a schedule?
“Never would have thought, a year ago, that you’d be the most stable one of the bunch.”
I hoot in his face at the strange joke. “Me? Stable? I’m losing it.”
He holds up his hand, with a generous grin, counting off on his fingers. “Pippa’s packed and unpacked her stuff so many times I think she’s finally starting to hate her babies. Sarge’s given up sleep altogether, and if I weren’t going in to spar with her I’m positive she’d have split the punch bag by now. Yesterday I saw her go on camera without even brushing her hair, which was really scary. And Captain Harbaugh…I don’t know. He’s probably fine, but you can never tell with that guy. Face it, we’re all about to crack. And yet somehow, you’re the one I can depend on. Darius would be so amused.”
I cock my head. Darius? But he just cuts his eyes away, smiling to himself.
“You know. Friend of my friend. Or, enemy of my enemy I guess.”
At some point I think we both decided we were glad he’s not on the mission. As strange as that is to consider.
“I wonder what he’s doing right now,” I say, almost to myself, and Alden laughs.
“One thing I know is that he’s fine. He’s always fine. That’s what makes him so easy to be around. He just doesn’t…care.”
That tracks, and I nod. It seems horrible to me, of course, but it makes sense that Alden would enjoy that lack of pressure. I smile warmly, offering the gift of goo
dwill toward his friend.
“We’ll see him again soon.”
Alden nods, and then subtly looks my face over. About to propose a wild theory, I bet.
“It feels like…I don’t know. Does it feel, to you, possibly, that the closer we get to the moon…”
“The crazier we’re going?” I crack a smile, but not a huge one. “On a daily basis, cadet. The evidence is pretty irrefutable.”
I cut my eyes toward our shared berth, giving him permission to file our slumbers under that madness, but he shakes his head at that.
“I don’t think we’re going crazy. I think we’re just getting more… real. Honest.”
I like that idea. A lot. And from his obvious delight and the way he was relaxing, I can tell he was hoping I would.
“Honest, huh? Sounds like a mistake.”
Alden smiles again, taking a long, deep, soul shaking breath. Is he smelling me right now, like I can smell him? Would it be okay to just climb into his arms, smell the sweat and musk of his workout all over my skin, roll in it? I’m hoping he’ll be too tired for a shower before our next starlit nap. Would he find that request too strange? Nothing seems strange anymore, but I don’t want to blow it.
I shift sideways on the small couch, and he sits obediently, one strong arm draped over the back. I lean over tentatively, finally crawling right up against his side. It feels daring, adventurous, to put my nose in the crook of his neck, here in a common room, rather than our secret bed.
Alden’s chest rises and falls beneath me, in time with the low rumble of his breathing. He absently strokes my arm, and then my side. Curving one large hand around my ribs, like a family dog settling in for a cuddle.
“Julian?”
I mumble into his shoulder, taking the opportunity to inhale deeply.
